On Jan. 2, the entry under Aries warned that "some associations will face make-it-or-break-it challenges." The next day the relationship between puzzle- doing readers and The Chronicle was dealt a severe blow when the Commuter crossword, Bridge column, Chess column, Jumble, Cryptoquip and Horoscope were moved out of the Datebook section and into the Classified section.

Readers by the hundreds called and wrote to declare how

(six- letter word for intellectually challenged) or
(five-letter word for incompetent) the editors were. Those who missed an announcement on the Datebook cover thought their favorite features had been dumped. Others searched, but couldn't find what they were looking for.

Some wrote plaintively, sounding like James Stewart's George Bailey in the film "It's a Wonderful Life." Just as he meandered vainly through a place familiar yet changed in search of a friendly face, they wandered from page to page to find the features they craved.

They hated that they had to go to Datebook and Classified to see a full array of puzzles. They thought the paper had come up with a ploy to force them to read the classifieds. And because the remaining crossword in Datebook was now spread two-thirds of the way across the back page, making it impossible to quarter-fold the page to do the puzzle, they knew the whole thing had been engineered by someone who was clueless about crosswords.

Why such a fuss over puzzles? In a world of war and poverty, political conflict and social discord, they're merely games, diversions. But that misunderstands the purpose of puzzles and the nature of readers.

Part of it has to do with the relationships that readers form with their newspaper. The very language we use testifies to the importance of habit. "I saw a pretty good story in my paper this morning about ..." "My paper hasn't done a very good job on that issue." Good, bad or indifferent, it's my paper.

Newspapers try to foster those connections: Certain things are always in the same place, similar subjects are organized together; many features are anchored and predictable -- as if to cushion the impact of ever-changing and often-discouraging news they read elsewhere in the paper. It's good business, and on some level it's good journalism.

The other point is that puzzle fans aren't necessarily single-interest readers. Often they take up the crossword as a mental workout, part of a broader interest that leads them to many parts of the paper. They may start with a puzzle, but that's just the beginning. Like the restaurant that implores people to "Come for the food, stay for the pie," papers want people to come for the puzzles, stay for the coverage.

Unlike many who proclaim their unhappiness with The Chronicle, those who expressed dismay over the puzzle move weren't driven by ideology, weren't trying to spin coverage, weren't responding to some Internet-based entreaty to badger the paper to report this or support that. They acted individually, and for the most part thoughtfully, with no other motive than to make it easier to find and work their puzzles.

So puzzle players deserve a lot of deference from The Chronicle. Most felt they didn't get it.

In the first few days, the paper didn't say why it was making such a move, so sure to be abrasive. And it left unexplained how moving puzzles from one part of the paper to another could cut costs.

As Executive Datebook Editor David Wiegand said in a note to readers on the third day, these are economically challenging times for newspapers. That's an understatement. Around the country papers are cutting features, cutting pages and cutting staffs as they wrestle with the other side of the business equation -- income.

That reality hit home with Datebook when Wiegand and team were told they needed to reduce their use of newsprint by an average of two pages on weekdays. We're not talking chump change here: At a paper this size, it represents savings in the very high six figures.

The challenge was to cut space while minimizing the impact on readers. But how does shifting puzzles from here to there make a difference? It worked like this: The paper managed to tuck, trim and otherwise squeeze the section enough to reduce more than 1 1/2 pages a day, but couldn't get beyond that without draconian steps. Moving the puzzles to a section that had a little fudge space -- Classified -- made the difference, getting Datebook to its goal, or close enough.

Some readers told me they considered the change a public-be-damned maneuver to bolster the bottom line. I disagree. It may be frustrating, but it preserved the puzzles and headed off other potential cuts. The failure to fully communicate the paper's motives at the outset, however, allowed readers to misjudge the decision.

Still, the situation is a daily annoyance and a compromise. When the money-squeeze loosens, the paper should make restoration of the old puzzle format a high priority.

P.S.: There's a small bit of good news in all this. The back page of Datebook has been redesigned to accommodate the many readers who found it maddeningly impossible to properly fold the paper to do the crossword.